FCBARCELONA.CAT

06.07.2009 16:35

First report on Messi

Jaume Marcet

Xavi Llorens has revealed to Barça TV the report he made in the autumn of 2000 about a diminutive player who was just starting out in the Barça youth teams called Leo Messi. Llorens then described the Argentine as “a little Maradona”.

The autumn of 2000. Xavi Llorens, under-14s B team trainer at Barcelona, was tasked by the club’s then academy director Quimet Rifé to draw up a report about a 13-year-old boy who had just arrived from Rosario and who might be joining the club.

Conclusive report

“He’s not much physically but he is technically superb and incredibly fast.” That’s how Xavi Llorens’s report about the youthful Leo Messi began. Llorens was with the Argentine in the 2000/01 season, when Leo was going through a bad time with injuries: “I remember that he was very different on and off the pitch. He was shy in the dressing room and didn’t say much, but he was bold on the pitch and did all those things we see now at Camp Nou”.

Best in the world

The man who was Leo’s first coach in the Barça academy thinks that now “Messi is the best player in the world. Kaká and Ronaldo are good, but what Leo can come up with out on the park is incomparable”. The current women’s first team coach includes Xavi and Messi “among the best five in the world”.